Do you have your dryer vent cleaned?

[Mishetta]

We've been in this house for 7 years now & I've never had mine cleaned. I do clean out the filter every time I finish a load but have never had the vent cleaned. If you do have yours cleaned, how often? How much do you pay (if you hire to have it done?) I saw an ad yesterday promoting a $19 fee to have dryer vents cleaned....is that a good price?

 

[always quiet]

I have never had mine cleaned. I assume you mean the one leading to the outside of your house. Every so often, I run the dryer for several minutes without the lint filter in. The force of the air "blows out" all the build up that gathers between the dryer and the vent. If I haven't done it in awhile, when I do it and check outside, it looks like their is a huge white furball laying in my driveway!

 

[believe]

We check our's on a regular basis. I have heard of several individuals who's house has caught on fire because of lint in the dry vents.

 

[Mishetta]

That's just what I was afraid of believe ~ a lint fire!!

always quiet ~ I didn't know that you could just run your dryer with no filter & have the lint blown out. I wonder how effective that really is?

 

[always quiet]

My dryer is located on an exterior wall of my house. If I remove the vent cap (the open screen kind of thing ) from outside, I can stick my arm in the vent all the way. I never get more than a small amount of lint that is left in the vent.

 

[JoGloMorKat]

Here is a story about not checking your dryer vent.

At a house DW and I lived in about 7 years ago, we never checked the vent. It went from the laundry room across the garage and exited outside.

I started noticing mositure stains on the garage ceiling. Looked like a water leak. Ruined the sheetrock in the garge ceiling. Concerned for the bathroom directly on top of the damaged area, I tore open the ceiling looking for the water source. Turned out that the dryer vent was clogged. Moisture from the clothes we were trying to dry (not all that successsfully btw) was condensing around the pipe and dripping to the ceiling. I had to cut open the dryer vent tube, clean out about a foot of clog and install a new tube.

It was designed so poorly there was no way I could ever clean it out from the inside so I started using a plumbers snake from the outside.

On our current house, the dryer is next to an outside wall so all I have to do is clean out that flex tube every 6 months or so.

Moral of the story: If your clothes don't seem to be drying well, check the vent!

 

[CEDmom]

We've been having ours cleaned every year for the last few years. We didn't have it done until we started having problems with things taking way too long to dry. The 1st visit cost about $100 but they went up into the attic and onto the roof. Our development had put new vent screens and caps on and the thing was really clogged. Our front lawn looked like it had snowed from all the lint they blew out. We just do maintenance now and it runs about $60. The other thing we found out was flexible vent from the dry into the wall was no longer up to code and could pose a fire hazard . We had that replaced right away. I know several people that have had house fires because of clogged vents so it's definitely worth the cost.

 

[LtlTee]

JoGloMorKat --
The same exact thing happened to us in the same spot! (At least it wasn't a plumbing leak, which is what I was afraid it would be.) There was a huge hole in my garage ceiling where the sheetrock got ruined because one of the joints in the vent leaked from the condensation build-up.
After we had someone come out and clear the line out, I was amazed how much faster all my stuff dried! I guess it was a gradual build-up, and I didn't really notice that it was taking that much longer for clothes to dry. We will now have this done on a regular basis.

 

[Beastlover]

Ours is in the basement, so last month I ventured down there with the ol' shop vac and took the tube apart, and sucked out all of the excess lint......it is amazing! Glad I did it!

 

[TerriP]

Since we have two dogs in the house, one of which is a bigtime shedder, DH cleans our dryer vent every six months. Even thought I empty the filter after every load, there is substantial lint in the vent when he cleans it out.

 

[mrsv98]

Our dryer is fairly close to the outside wall so I bought a long, flexible brush from the Improvements Catalog and once every few weeks I clean it from the inside and then from the outside. It seems to work pretty well. I hadn't heard about running the dryer without the filter, I think I will try that too!

 

[Mishetta]

So we can do this ourselves? All I would have to do is take off the shutters like thingy on the outside wall & I can clean it out? I don't think I could get my arm down the venting tube! We also had our flexible venting tube replaced with the metal type. (I'm not sure what that's made of but it's no longer 'flexible!')

I should check into that long flexible brush that was mentioned here!

 

[Pop Daddy]

no

 

[AboutTheMouse]

Seeing this thread brought back a really bad memory.

About two years ago, a house around the block from us caught fire from the lint build up in the dryer pipe. I had never thought of cleaning it out on a regular basis, but seeing the destruction to this neighbor's house has since convinced me to change my ways. This neighbor also never thought of cleaning the pipe on a regular basis and decided to dry a load while they went shopping. When they returned home, there was smoke coming from all of their windows and fire from the laundry room.

They lost basically everything due to fire / smoke / water damage. The fire department said that dryer fires are pretty common, because people think that cleaning the lint trap is sufficient.

Bottom line, do yourself a favor and either have it professionally cleaned or clean it yourself. And never dry a load of laundry if you are not home.

 

[Pin Wizard]

Hmmmmmmmmmmm...I was wondering about that myself a couple weeks ago when my new washer and dryer showed up. I have NO CLUE where it goes! The vent for the dryer was at the bottom of the wall. Can't get at that unless the dryer is pulled out of place. Where does it go? Does it go up in the wall somewhere? On the second floor I have a storage area. Inside there is a pretty big silver squishy pipe like thing LOL! I don't know how to describe it. Like a tunnel of some sort. Is that for the dryer? For the heat? I haven't a clue. Never looked to see where it ends either.

 

[Jacket93]

One other thing that you should do if the vent duct is made out of plastic usally white replace it with a metal duct I think it is code now for any new dryer installation.